Posted: Mon May 15, 2006 10:26 am Post subject: Do Project Managers and Service Level Managers work together

I am student studying the subject and am finding it difficult to understand whether project managers and service managers work together, or if a service manager is mainly active only when the project manager finishes. Any thoughts?

If by Service manager you mean to enquire about the relationship between Service Level Management and Project Management the answer is yes. To what level, when and how, they will work together depends on how project management is handled and how the project manager is functioning.

Projects change Services, what projects are undertaken and how they are progressing is of ciritcal interest to the Service Level Manager.

But if project managers are not initiators of the projects they are managing and have no say in the project deliverbles (and that would be rare) then they can work through change and release controls and the Change manager can handle the relationship with Serivce Level Management.

But given that in most cases a good project manager will be faced with scope and quality decisions during any project, they would at the very least consult with Service Level Management on those decisions.

More formally, for Service altering projects the Service Level Manager would be part of the project governance or steering committees.

I'm not sure if this is the best set up, but where I work, Service Management deals with the 'run' order, or those services already in production. Project Managers work more with the business on new projects or changes to existing applications.

I work closely with the project managers only so that I can update SLA's or the run order as they release new projects/applications, etc.